Flying Cheapskates

A few weeks back I wrote in WSJ.com about Bezurk.com, a great travel website that’s on a par, if not better, than Kayak, Sidestep, Zuji and Yahoo! FareChase.

Here’s what I wrote:

What I like about Bezurk’s site is that it follows what I think are the best unwritten rules of Web 2.0, the new, more social and interactive generation of Internet services: It’s simple, intuitive and does its best not to bother you. It doesn’t require lots of hitting the refresh or back buttons. It doesn’t include deals that aren’t available or seats that are already sold.

Bezurk also doesn’t require you to click on page after page of “refining” questions — “Do you require a vegetarian menu? Would you consider flying from an airport that is actually on the other side of the country?” — before coming back with the predictable punchline, “No results found.” I also like the fact that the price including tax is also given, where possible, below the quoted price: In many cases this adds 50% to the fare.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work particularly well with flights in North Asia, and with those out of the U.S. and Europe. For now. They promise improvements on this, and I think they’re going to be quite soon. They also miss out on one or two budget airlines, for which I’d suggest AirNinja.com which won’t give you all the flight details, but will at least tell you which budget airlines fly the route you’re looking to take, and link you to the website.

Says Seattle-based John Hostetler, who runs the site:

AirNinja shows flights that aren’t found on the major travel sites and fills in the gaps left by major carriers. I’ve traveled extensively throughout Europe and booked flights for slightly more than the cost of taxes and found direct flights that I couldn’t find elsewhere. This is present in Asia as well.

Worth trying out.